


Panic Response

by Barb G (troutkitty)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-07
Updated: 2005-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-24 13:59:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troutkitty/pseuds/Barb%20G
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McKay and Sheppard go offworld and don't come back alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Panic Response

Planets are usually uninhabited for a reason.

MX6-323 was uninhabited.

There was a reason.

John had gone first into the gate. The moment of compression gave way to the rush and release, and he stepped onto the planet.

The city looked worse than abandoned. They had seen what the Wraith could do to the ancient civilizations in the Pegasus Galaxy, but at least most of the unfortunate people still lived in the shadow of their former glory. Here, nothing remained, and the heavy shadow of doom and loss hung in the air like something tangible. It reminded him of Afghanistan and the Antarctic at the same time.

Something pushed him, invisible, and he stumbled back into Rodney as he came through the gate.

"The usual protocol for gate activity, Colonel, at its most basic level, is to immediately step out of the gate's path once you have cleared the event horizon. You think you would--" Rodney began, but the words died in his throat. "Oh," he finally finished.

The eeriness grew in John's head the longer he stood there. His heartbeat echoed on the roof of his mouth. "I think we should go back," he said, and then realized he'd spoken aloud. Still, resisting the need to turn tail and run was making his legs hurt.

"Go back?" Rodney repeated. "There has to be a logical--" Again the words died. He cocked his head, obviously listening for something, and then paled. "Yes, back is good."

***

"...there are no such things as ghosts." John felt ridiculous stating the obvious, but they were on their way to the briefing to explain the aborted mission and it was important to present a united front.

"Absolutely. Energy sucking dark shadows--"

"Nanotechnology attacking cortexes--"

"Kavanagh falling asleep on his radio link-up--" They both shuddered, remembering the hideous whining sound that had shaken the halls.

Rodney recovered first. "There is absolutely--"

"--positively--" John broke in.

Rodney gave him a dirty look. "No such thing as ghosts."

***

"...ghosts?" Weir asked.

"Not precisely," Rodney said. He'd lifted his chin in order to sound more sure of himself, but then floundered when it came time to explain the... ghosts.

"It was more like--"

"A feeling of--" John managed.

"Well..." Rodney again ran out of words.

"--wigginess," John finished for him. "It was a feeling of wigginess."

"You cancelled the mission for nerves?" Weir asked. At least she kept her voice flat and didn't let the incredulity enter it.

"Yes," John and Rodney said together.

Weir only nodded.

John opened his mouth, getting ready to explain he'd been in hundreds of worse situations, and not one of them had come close to that sense of dread, but Weir only held up her hand.

"I understand," she said. "And I trust you."

"Thank you," John said, leaning back on his chair, just as Rodney was doing the same thing.

For the rest of the day, John couldn't shake the sensation of being watched, and the people around him were starting to get weirded out by the way he constantly looked over his shoulder.

Rodney would understand. John found him in his lab, studying his laptop intently, but it wasn't until John came around the desk that he saw the bouncing ball screensaver. Rodney stared up at him, already looking slightly haggard, daring John to make something of his inattention, but John just grabbed another chair.

He sat close enough so that their backs were touching, and Rodney leaned into him as hard as he leaned into Rodney.

They could eat together in the mess, buddies did that, and then go back to Rodney's room to watch a Monty Python DVD that Rodney had smuggled in a false bottom in one of his supply crates, which tripled his personal space allowance. But the later it got, the less John wanted to walk down the hall alone to his own room.

Which was ridiculous. Which he *knew* was ridiculous, but that didn't stop his heart from pounding whenever he thought about opening the door.

"It's just an effect from the perfectly logical but presently unknown explanation," Rodney said.

"You sure about that?" John said, willing the door open, but the anxiety raised the hair on the back of his neck.

"Relatively." Rodney said, sounding as unsure as John had ever heard. "You're a military guy, you must have billeted out in places far less comfortable than my floor."

"Billeted out?" John asked, eyebrow raised, but the pure logic in Rodney's words made him breath easier.

Rodney shrugged. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and then took a deep breath. "CanIjoinyou?"

If John had to verbalize the word, he probably would have refused, so instead he nodded. Rodney helped him drag what they could to the floor, and the klaxons still going off in his brain dimmed long enough for him to sleep.

Dreams came to him, then, lurching to where he stood like something rotting and fetid. But the minute amount of suffering was nothing to the huge lurking presence that stalked him. The fact that the things reaching for him were dead didn't bother him as much as the hatred and despair the darkness left him with, and through it all, something watched him. He woke up, shaking and sweating in the night. Rodney reached for him when he sat up, and John waited until he could breath without huge gasps before he lay back down again.

The next day, even being far enough away from Rodney so that he could shower was painful. John collapsed against the common wall between the bathroom and the bedroom and waited for Rodney to finish.

John broke into the room while Rodney was still shaving, and instead of 'get the hell out,' Rodney just said, "I think it's time to go see Carson."

John agreed whole-heartedly.

***

Beckett took blood, ran tests and scanned him, but none of that seemed to help the crawling panic. Rodney, who had endured all the same pokes and prods, was now sitting on the bed, calmly discussing the situation.

"It's as though there is a continual sense of being watched," Rodney said. "But more than watched. What would you say, Colonel, hated, almost? And being alone is the absolute worse feeling. Most unpleasant."

"Is that the way of it?" Beckett asked, looking at John.

"He forgot the panic," John said. "There's lots and lots of panic."

"I think he has that worse than I do. But then he was on the planet longer than I was."

"Well, I can prescribe Atavan for the panic attacks for a short while, but--"

"These aren't panic attacks!" John stood up. "It's like...crawling across my skin. We have to get back down there."

"Colonel," Rodney said, voice soft. "It's all right. We'll find out why it's happening."

John pointed a finger at him, and was shocked to see how much it was shaking. He put his hand under his arm and stood there until Beckett gave him a little pink pill to dissolve under his tongue. The soothing sensation came a moment later, but wasn't strong enough to completely remove the feeling of impending doom in his belly.

"Well, come along, then," Rodney said, taking his arm. "We have to go find Weir."

John grabbed his arm back. Beckett had already left them, "You're handling this well," he said, more scornfully than he intended.

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm as terrified as you are."

"Like hell."

Rodney grabbed John's hand back. "I'm as terrified as you are," he repeated. "But forgive me for pointing out that terror was a long standing hazard of my work-load. I've learned to work through the petrification."

"How did you do that?" John asked, uncertain if he felt mollified from the drugs or the skin contact.

"I learned it from you. I know I'm not scared--it's just a physiological response."

John took a moment to digest that all. "All right, then," he said. It didn't stop the feeling of cockroaches running over his feet, but at least he was able to push it that much further away.

***  
"Absolutely not."

"Something on that planet affected us," Rodney said. The lift to his chin was back, and the battle of wills was joined.

"And I understand that, Rodney. But if this is what is happening, I'm not going to risk any more men."

"Wait just a minute," John said, hating the way his heartbeat pounded in his chest. The nervous sweat trickled from his hairline, and he couldn't help but be ultra aware of any noise coming from behind him.

Elizabeth held out her hand again. "I didn't say no, I said I'm not going to risk either one of you. Take the drone through the gate, do whatever testing you need. Once we have more information, we'll be able to make better decisions. How much time do you need, Rodney?"

Rodney was also sweating, John hadn't noticed it before. The fingers tapping out a pattern on the table were as white as John's, and both of them flinched when the transporter door opened and closed outside the meeting room. "An hour," he said, keeping his mouth in a thin line.

"Good. We'll meet in the gate room then."

By some mutually agreed-upon pact, they waited for her to be out of earshot before speaking. "It's getting worse," Rodney said, barely moving his mouth.

John put his arm around him.

The drone didn't need much by way of modulation, but since Rodney didn't exactly know what they were testing for, he went at it with a shot-gun approach. John approved. Having it roll through the gate was much more like playing with a Mars Rover RC car, although when he said as much, Rodney muttered, "It takes pictures of rocks. Sometimes, it drills holes in them," and insisted it was a Canadian thing and John wouldn't get it.

Thirty-seven minutes later, the drone wheeled back through the gate and they had it decontaminated before bringing it back to the lab.

The intelligent thing to do would have been for John to go back to his room when the halls were still filled with people. Instead, he went down to the lab, where Rodney and Zelenka yelled things at each other with much snapping of fingers. The halls grew silent; the echoes lasted twice as long.

Something dropped outside the door, and John jumped to his feet. It sounded as though it had been kicked down the hall, towards the lab, and the rush of blood in his ears made them feel hot and tight. Rodney looked up as well, frozen where he knelt over the drone, and no one moved for that full moment. "It's probably nothing," he said, and a wailing moan beat against the walls.

"That wasn't nothing," John said. He reached for his 9mm, but Rodney had taken it away during breakfast when he reached for it after a scientist had dropped his meal tray.

"Kavanagh's head is too heavy," Zelenka said, dismissively and went back to work. "All the time it falls. He should learn to take off his radio."

"He does have a point," Rodney said.

John had just managed to settle down again, when the sound of feet ran down the hall. Not one, but several dozen, and the moans that followed raised the hair on his arms and neck. Just as soon as it began, the footfalls ended, and normal night time sounds returned. And always, the single wail that made each follicle of hair on John try to pull out of his skin.

"That is something," Zelenka said, finally.

***

The hastily called meeting brought everyone out of the beds, but from the haggard looks and cradled coffee cups, it didn't look as if anyone had had much sleep. John was secretly glad that he wouldn't have to face sleeping alone that night, despite the fact that Rodney had yet again insisted that he not be given a P-90. John found himself glancing over to the nearest marine and wondered if he could take his.

"So everyone," Elizabeth said, her voice scratching her throat. "Spill. What did you see?"

"There was running down the hall," Rodney said, after a long pause. "It started with a wail."

"I saw shadows over my bed, just hovering," Beckett added, sounding slightly less sure. "I swore they were reaching for me."

The rest came in a blur of voices.

"The lights kept flickering."

"Something sat on my chest."

"When I screamed the shadows filled my mouth."

"All right, all right. So what is it? What happened to that planet?" Elizabeth asked.

"The drone sensed a huge power source. Not as much as a ZPM, but it was up there," Rodney said. His voice was dull again, flat, and John studied his face. "It could be fuelling some sort of...warning device. There are plants in the Amazon that can do much the same thing to ward off insects that might eat them."

"You're just coming up with this?" John demanded.

"I had no idea it was so wide spread. I thought it was just us, on the planet."

"So why Atlantis? Why now?"

"We've kept the gate open for over half an hour. Maybe it was able to piggy-back the radio-waves."

"But surely they must have dissipated by now. It's been over six hours," Elizabeth said.

"And we were only on the planet for a few minutes," John pointed out.

Rodney slumped in his chair. "I got nothing," he said.

"No, I think you might have something," Elizabeth said. "I think it's time to go back to the planet, but this time, wear full Hazmat suits. We'll have a team on stand-by ready to pull you out if it doesn't work. Let's see if just pulling the plug takes down their warning system."

"Yes, because it's always that simple," Rodney said, but at least the first sign of relief showed on his face.

***  
Flying the puddlejumper with a Hazmat suit on was like having sex wearing a condom inside a raincoat. Rodney's mask was fogging up, and the alarm window kept informing John that both the pilot and the passenger's heart-rate and blood pressure had exceeded recommended parameters. Each time he dismissed the window, it popped up again like porn spam.

"You okay?" John asked.

"Just fine, John, yourself?" Rodney asked, and the technology of the ancients brought the sarcasm loud and clear through the mike.

John reached across to him, putting his thickly gloved hand over Rodney's thickly gloved hand. He should have felt nothing at all, but the warning window went down without him willing it and stayed down until they landed.

The airlock to the jumper disengaged, and the planet's air changed the pressure of the suit. He had to let Rodney's hand go to get out of the jumper, and it left him tight-chested and short of breath until Rodney had walked around his side. They had parked as close as they could to the centre of the city to the power source.

The machine almost looked like a DHD, although it was perfectly flat on the top. The glow to it showed that whatever energy source was being used was still working, despite its dull grey top.

Rodney smeared his finger across it and cut through an inch and a half of dust and grime. John helped him brush away as much of the dirt as they could, but it was hard to concentrate when every inch of his skin crawled from not being able to turn around and see what was behind him. Rodney caught his wrist. "There's nothing there," he said. "Believe me."

John nodded, but that didn't stop his heebies from jeebying.

The language on the device wasn't Ancient. It wasn't Wraith, and it wasn't any of the other written languages known to them in the Pegasus Galaxy. If Rodney was making heads or tails from it, John couldn't tell. He was doing his quiet and still face while his brain worked.

Something moved behind them. John spun around, trying to see. The dead city didn't look any different, but the rolling crashes coming in didn't sound like thunder to him, even through the mikes. The feeling of not being wanted amplified, and John reached out to take Rodney's arm. "I think we should go," he said.

"I'm not done yet," Rodney said, batting his hand away.

John didn't let that deter him. He grabbed the suit again, not letting Rodney brush him off. Clouds were rolling in, now, dark and threatening, but that was the least of John's concern. The dead were coming for them. It sounded ridiculous in his head, but the longer he stood there, the more he felt the former inhabitants' fury that they would dare be here. The single entity had found them, and it was coming.

"Rodney--"

Rodney looked behind John for a heartbeat and then paled. "Yes, of course. Just two seconds."

He pushed the top three times in three different places, and a panel popped open at their feet. "What did you do?" John demanded.

"It's Ancient for Control-Alt-Delete," Rodney said. "I thought I'd give it a try." He grabbed the yellow shining box from the panel, and pulled. John was going to stop him, but nothing would have been able to shock him through the gloves. Things began reaching out for him, pushing and pulling at his suit. Rodney felt it as well, and while running in a Hazmat suit is not the easiest thing to do, they made it back to the puddlejumper in almost record time.

***

"How did you know?" Elizabeth asked, once they were back in the round room.

"It's a fail-safe mechanism we've found in the lab."

"But that wasn't written in Ancient. How did you know it would work?" John asked. Back on Atlantis, the crawling sensation had gone back down to a minor ringing in his ear, but there were still pockets of shadows roaming the hall.

"The interface wasn't, yes, but the technology behind it was. I was able to approximate where the fail-safe was and trip it."

"Well done, Rodney."

Rodney shook his head. "You don't understand. Well, of course you don't, so let me explain it. I've never seen ancient technology out of a lab that had that particular default code as their fail-safe."

"Still not understanding, if you were keeping score, or something," John said, but the dread inside him grew.

"That machine probably, and this is entirely speculation, wasn't given to that planet."

"They stole it?" Elizabeth asked.

Rodney shrugged. "Probably? And if you can extrapolate our batting average re our usage of ancient technology, I can hazard a guess that something went wrong."

"How would a civilization from Pegasus have the ATA gene to activate it?" Elizabeth asked.

John put the pieces together and broke out in cold sweat. "They didn't just steal the machine," he said. Everyone stared. "They stole an Ancient, as well."

***

The scans, once they'd been properly calibrated, picked up on the small dots of energy immediately. They were hovering over the generators. Their drain wasn't dangerous by any means, but the leeching was persistent.

"My mother always used to say, better energy sucking aliens than life draining ones," Rodney said, under his breath, but John heard him anyhow.

"Turn off the generators," Elizabeth said. "Let's see if we can't entice them home."

Powering down Atlantis could all be done in the control room, and with no giant storm or Wraith invasion coming it seemed almost anti-climatic. The floating masses moved slowly from their dead generators and travelled to the control room, but hovered just this side of the gate. People began to fidget, brows dotted with sweat, but nothing would entice them to actually cross the barrier.

John found the reaction strangely removed, and not the crippling panic he'd come to expect. Rodney barely showed any discomfort at all.

"Okay, shut it down," Elizabeth said. "We'll try again in the morning."

The heavy oppressiveness didn't last as the pull of the generators removed most of the wave from the room, but people returned to their rooms in pairs and stuck to the light on the way back to their rooms.

***

"So it's a failed ascension experiment?" Rodney asked. He wasn't actually asking, but talking aloud to himself. John recognized the difference. He also realized the difference between knowing that the thing stalking him was an Ancient furious over the past ten thousand years and being able to sleep alone in his own bed without screaming nightmares was more than a matter of semantics, but Rodney hadn't kicked him off his floor yet, and he was starting to get comfortable where he was.

They'd worked into the night, running the electronic log Rodney had taken from the machine against all the known translation programs, and found the support they had needed. When the ancient hadn't co-operated, they had cut off his throat and activated the machine with his dying breath.

Only he hadn't died. The entire planet had been vaporized, leaving nothing but the energy signatures of every man, woman and child on the planet stuck to the city's power source.

The pillow behind John's head wasn't big enough to support his neck, not when he was flat on his back, and he looked over enviously to Rodney's plush feather pillow. "How do you get rid of a failed experiment?" John asked.

"Look for the nearest rug?" Rodney suggested.

"I think sweeping up an entire planet full of failed ascended ones might be a little more difficult than a spill."

He was now on Rodney's pillow, and he was right, it was far more comfortable than the airplane-like Atlantis ones. Rodney had obviously shifted over so that they could share, and had even rolled onto his side to make more room. John knew how uncomfortable curling up on hard flooring could be, but it did allow an easier distribution of arms and legs.

"They like power," Rodney said, putting his hand on John's chest, splayed out, like a Wraith, but John only felt the warmth of his hand. It was true; at night when the machines had powered off, they'd all felt the beings rush from where they were to the naquida generators.

"Um, power," John said. He reached up and touched Rodney's hair. It was softer than he thought it would be, more like a cat's. Rodney closed his eyes and leaned into his finger, which John found was stroking the soft spot behind Rodney's ears.

Rodney leaned down, lips parting slightly, before his eyes flew open and was using his hand on John's chest as a spring-board. "Osmosis," he said, and was already out the door before John finished dressing.

John considered the mood to be broken.

***

They dialled the planet, and went through before shutting down the gate. Rodney and John gave them four minutes to power down before dialling Atlantis again. A long moment passed, then two, and the clouds seemed to be gathering. They hopped back through the gate, and a moment later Atlantis powered itself back up again.

"Close down and lock out that address," Elizabeth said, when the final scan came through reporting no anomalies. "Excellent work, people."

John sidled up to Rodney. Being that close thrilled him more than it should, and Rodney didn't move away despite the lack of need for closeness in the room. "You still flipping out?" he asked.

Rodney waved his hand. "Slightly."

"Me, too."

A nod. A pause. Then, a quick smile.

John didn't want to ask the words, and then he didn't have to. He led the way and knew Rodney followed.

He tore his favourite black shirt. Rodney tripped on his slacks and crashed into the nest of bedding they'd created over the past couple of days. John took full advantage of the situation, pinning Rodney's wrists above his head, and for a moment they both lay there, breath catching in their throats for a completely new reason. Atlantis had marked both their skins with puffy new pink scars, and John touched the still raised line on Rodney's forearm.

Rodney shook his head.

And they were kissing.

Rodney had a much vaster repertoire than anyone John had ever been with, and his fingers were magical on his skin. He took what some might say would be an unhealthy interest with the expanse of skin where his thigh touched his flank, but to John it was good. Rodney's mouth over him raised him off the floor, his entire weight resting on his shoulders and rump, and Rodney's fingers...his fingers...

"Rodney, are you doing your scales?" John managed.

"Um. Yes. Sorry."

"No, no, uh, carry on. Please."

The response was muffled, and John was gone, spinning down into the floor.

He crawled back out of the hole temporarily, almost embarrassed to try to match that which had been done to him, but Rodney responded well to the raw enthusiasm. He followed Rodney's example, hitting F sharp as often as he could manage, and Rodney's tense body shuddered.

Rodney started to snore immediately afterwards, with an arm and a leg both carelessly thrown over John's body, and despite the heat, he found himself being pulled down as well.

He dreamed of the planet, of the Ancient who looked exactly like them but so perfect they looked nothing alike. His shock at being captured, at mere humans being the one who had captured him in the middle of their stand against the Wraith made none of it real to him until he saw the knife.

The proto-type of the machine didn't work. He railed against their blind stupidity, at the cost it would take from them, but with the hive ships so close, he supposed he understood their fear. The Wraith weren't decimating the population this round, but taking every one in two, and the humans' desperation held the blade to his throat as much as any one man's hand.

He hadn't thought dying would feel like that. The Wraith activated adrenal glands, making their prey feed them to the last, but bleeding out, beyond the awful, initial pain, only made him tired. When they held his hands to the machine and the terrible yellow began to glow, he thought he had escaped the half living death of the failed experiment.

Instead, he'd been trapped. John saw him, standing by the machine that generated the power that had fuelled the machine. His throat, bled out so many millennia ago, looked white where it should have been a deep red.

"So you will just leave me here," he said, speaking in that voice that was more than human.

"I don't--" John said, but then he did understand. "The pull of the generators wasn't enough for you."

A twisted smile, matching the line of the cut. "Not by half," he said.

"You couldn't have just told me this?" John asked.

"You couldn't have heard me past your own body's response."

And then he was back in Rodney's room. There was no fear, no panic, only a sense of urgency to complete the final task.

***

Elizabeth understood, as did Rodney, who was only being slightly mulish. "You're not going to kiss this one, are you?" he demanded.

"I try not to kiss anyone when I can see their neckbone through their throat, Rodney, but that's just me."

Rodney looked at him and went back to staring at the gate. The sun behind them was so close that Rodney was turning pink again.

"We're ready here, Colonel," a voice crackled in his ear.

"Dialling the planet," John said. The DHD responded, the gate opened, and the golden cloud passed the 'jumper, heading straight into the sun.

"That's it, then," Rodney said, finally.

"Home?" John asked.

"Um."

"You snore, you know."

"And you kick."

"I do not."

"I've seen half-grown puppies twitch less, Colonel, in experiments where their myelin sheath growth had been permanently stunted."

"Yeah? Well...you snore!"

Rodney kissed him, probably just to shut him up, and the jumper flew home on the Ancient version of auto-pilot.

  



End file.
